


Call Me Friend But Keep Me Closer

by Chanter



Series: Not Alone [4]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Canon Callbacks, Canon Quotes, Complicated Grief, Daydreams, Devotion, Empathy, Gabriel Agreste's A+ wieldership, Gen, Guilt, Longing, Loss, Moral injury, conflicted feelings, empathic spillover, free Nooroo 2K5ever, genderfluid Duusu, intersex Mylène Hapréle, nonbinary Nooroo, peafowl!Émilie Agreste, season 2 finale spoilers, season 3 references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22030309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chanter/pseuds/Chanter
Summary: Nooroo is not a slave in their dreams.  Guilt for the subversion scalds them every time, but they cannot stop dreaming.Part of the Not Alone 'verse, skipping ahead roughly eighteen years.  No, this is not the end of the story.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth & Nathalie Sancoeur, Nathalie Sancoeur & Duusu (Miraculous Ladybug), Nooroo (Miraculous Ladybug) & Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Nooroo (Miraculous Ladybug) & Caline Bustier, Nooroo (Miraculous Ladybug) & Duusu (Miraculous Ladybug), Nooroo (Miraculous Ladybug) & Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Nooroo (Miraculous Ladybug) & Mylène Hapréle, Nooroo (Miraculous Ladybug) & Rose Lavillant, Nooroo (Miraculous Ladybug) & Sabine Cheng, Émilie Agreste & Duusu (Miraculous Ladybug)
Series: Not Alone [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1302791
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Call Me Friend But Keep Me Closer

Nooroo has never yet been forbidden to dream, while asleep or otherwise, and considering the empowerments they've been fueling since they were found in the temple's ruins, Nooroo is grateful whenever they think of the rule Master has not yet laid down. The strictures placed on their waking world are enough, and Master's cold-burning rage blasting against their mind is easily, every time, twice that again. As for the night of their 3500th cycle... they try not to remember that particular demonstration of their holder's objection to freedom. But Nooroo can dream, asleep or awake, and Nooroo does. 

Oftentimes, and guilt-ridden - you have an owner now, you should be grateful he discovered you at all, never mind the means he's using in service of his ends - Nooroo imagines Master's son, the thoughtful young man with Miss Émilie's coloration, dusted in gossamer butterfly wingscales and levitating off the floor, deep violet plumes of antennae waving above his hair all the while. "Call me Viceroy," says Master's son--no, says Adrien, and the fine, one-handed silver sword he twirls has dazzling amethysts in its guard and chaotic piano key patterns stamped all along its grip's length. "Evil, it's time to meet your match!" Nooroo's head aches, and they file that dream away again and again, but they do not discard it. 

Not every idea works nearly as well or, says half their conscience, as badly. Nooroo tries only once to imagine the guardsman Master calls Gorilla, the human who seldom says a word, with royal purple wings on his back--no, no, definitely not. Nooroo cannot laugh themself silly at mental pictures, because Master will hear. The idea of Master's trusted servant Nathalie dressed in lavender goes little further, and with far less laughter behind its failure; when Master makes Nathalie into Catalyst, and then Nathalie makes Nathalie into Mayura - Duusu! Duusu is here too! How did Nooroo not realize he was so close? - the fault in Nooroo's daydream acquires a name. Devotion. 

There are others. Can the universe forgive Nooroo their disloyalty to their wielder--but can Nooroo forgive the evil Master is casting? Can Nooroo forgive the harm Master has done to the world, and to the innocent, and to Nathalie-Mayura, and to Duusu? There. are. others. Sometimes Nooroo dreams of the girl named Rose, Adrien's classmate (not Princess Fragrance anymore, thank you, Ladybug), beaming, hovering in midair on wings striped in the same vivid pink and purple banding as her dress, her shoes, her leggings, the sequins of her mask. "You know I love butterflies," she sings, perfectly on key. 

Once in a while, Nooroo dreams of the baker they've seen in the city, Sabine who was, just barely, Verity Queen, all flour-dusted hands and fierce determination to match her kind heart, twirling a twilight purple scarf like the ribbon in a ribbon dance until a blurry, snarling caricature of a lizard-masked villain trips into its tangle and sprawls. 

More often, though, it's the shy girl, Mylène who was Horrificator once (Nooroo is sorry, Mylène, truly), half-hidden beneath a thistle-shaded shawl with its edges embroidered in fine silk thread - carnation pink, autumn foliage yellow, delicate ice sculpture blue, pink, yellow, blue - diving into a cluster of uniformed people, her swallowtails and modest coat tails all just barely seen and, with a polite tap on one man's crescent-marked armband and a following nod of assent, granting the power to heal. The people with the cameras only get the name Violet Copper from her later, when they ask her directly, and it takes two full stammering seconds before she can say it outright. But she's smiling under her mask by the time she's flying away; Nooroo can feel it. 

And there is always, always the person Nooroo has noticed again and again, the adult human, the instructor who was made into Zombizou (Nooroo still burns with sorrow and shame for that one). "I am Caline," she says in Nooroo's head, to no one but them and then, "I am Clearwing," she announces like the ringing of cathedral bells, blunt silver-shod staff grounded and gripped in one hand, and fans fluttering wings wide. 

That dream is well-worn, beloved like an elderly moth. That dream has been gaining form and detail since Master empowered Stoneheart for the second time. That dream is as treasured as Nooroo's ability to have it. 

That dream makes Nooroo ache almost as much with sickly ingratitude as with yearning. I am Clearwing. I am Caline. She is Caline, and I am Nooroo, kwami of transmission--I am Clearwing Viceroy Violet Copper Clearwing. I am not Clearwing. I am Nooroo. And he is Hawkmoth, and his will is so strong. 

Nooroo's queasy longing, when it spikes, does not wake Master. This is a good thing. 

Duusu's abrupt fit of weeping does not wake Nathalie-Mayura-Catalyst Nathalie. This is also a good thing, as far as it goes, and never mind Nooroo's sense of their peafowl friend's own guilt and loss doubling back on Nooroo themself just as plainly as their emotions are still splashing Duusu in kind. Two empaths and more in one household, Nooroo, they think dully, in a mental voice that sounds like no one so much as Wayzz if all his usual concern were flattened out to nothing, never mind you're the stronger. You know this can happen sometimes. Émilie-Caline-Émilie-Clearwing-Émilie-Mylène-Adrien-Émilie, ma Émilie, amie Émilie, Émilie. 

Nooroo has heard Adrien's agemate the scholar, the young man with the surname Kanté, call a spiral of this type a feedback loop before. Nooroo deserves it, but Duusu does not. This is the fact that gets Nooroo to rein themself in, in the end. 

Nooroo does not stop dreaming. Nooroo is absolutely still allowed to wish that their Miraculous, and Duusu's, were being used as intended. Nooroo - forgive them, universe, please forgive them - is still allowed to dream of wielders who would not mistreat them. Not that Duusu's wielder mistreats Duusu especially when she's not being Mayura, but the issue underneath is still exactly that, and Duusu aches almost continuously with a loss that's just as strong as Master's, stronger, even, and cleaner besides. Nooroo is allowed to dream, and they are unable to give up that particular vice. They've tried. They've failed. 

Or perhaps they've succeeded. Duusu, at least, thinks so, when Nooroo finally dares confide. Nooroo isn't sure. 

But they do not stop dreaming.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first and last time Chanter will be using a Billie Eilish song lyric as inspiration! ... Unless something else pounces on me like this story did. :) 
> 
> Partial credit goes to Silveradept for the idea of butterfly!Mlle. Bustier, and to Alexseanchai for the idea of nonbinary!Nooroo. 
> 
> If you can spot where pride flag colors are subtly included in one character's costume, you are awesome. A violet copper is a small butterfly that's fairly common if patchily distributed throughout Europe. Clearwing is a moth category, and a viceroy is a North American butterfly similar but not identical to the more well-known monarch. 
> 
> This does represent quite a time skip in the Not Alone 'verse, but it is *NOT* the end of the series, chronologically or otherwise.


End file.
